There are high environmental and ethical costs regarding dairy production, so to decrease dairy’s environmental impact and avoid the need to cram high concentrations of lactating dairy cows in as little land as possible, researchers have been looking into creating dairy products without cows at all.

Milk is made up of water, carbs, fat, proteins, and some vitamins and minerals. If these compounds could be independently produced, it is feasible to make milk and other dairy products that are identical to cow milk without many of the downsides associated with its production. The method many researchers are considering is called precision fermentation, which utilizes microorganisms that are genetically programmed to make compounds of interest. This concept has been applied for decades, as seen with insulin precision fermentation, in which the gene for human insulin was inserted into E. coli bacteria and sold commercially starting in the 1980s (Sims et al.). Precision fermentation would enable the production of dairy products using microbes instead of cows, as the genes for the crucial proteins in cow milk have been available in genetic libraries since the late 80s (Sims et al.). 

Imagindairy, founded in 2020, is one company interested in producing dairy products using precision fermentation, and use genetic engineering and AI to optimize a strain of fungus for protein production. Imagindairy chose a filamentous fungus, which can be much more productive than other microbes, and are eukaryotic, which are a more preferable host than prokaryotes (like bacteria) for producing milk proteins. The highly efficient fungi maximize production, which helps reduce costs. Keeping costs as low as possible is crucial for setting prices competitive with cow’s milk, so Imagindairy manages their own production lines to further save time and money.  Imagindairy is working towards commercialization as soon as possible, as it has just invested in a new facility that offers “100,000 liters of fermentation capacity,” and the ability to “triple this volume in 1-2 years,” according to the company. Their whey has also been approved by the FDA for GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status, and have recently announced its collaboration with Ginkgo Bioworks to spur the development of the organisms that will produce non-whey dairy proteins (Wipf).

Commercial success would be extremely beneficial to the environment, as “dairy cattle [are] responsible for […] 20% of livestock emissions,” with a whopping “3% of all anthropogenic emissions” coming from the production of dairy products (Pope et al.). In a promotional video made by Imagindairy, the company claims that the milk produced with their methods produce “93% less GHG emissions,” and use “98% less water” and 100 times less land than from producing milk from cows.

Making milk from scratch means they can be picky about what compounds are inside, and as a result, their milk has no lactose, cholesterol, growth hormones, or milk borne diseases. Additionally, removing cows from the equation eliminates the concern of the development of antibiotic resistance, as farm cows are fed antibiotics because of their dense and unclean living conditions, and therefore serve as a vector for antibiotic resistance to grow. This also means there are fewer vectors for diseases such as H5 (avian) influenza, which is not endemic in human populations but does have the potential to spill over. Prior to this year, there had been just one reported case of the H5 avian influenza strain in the US, but ten more cases have been reported just since April 2024, four of which are correlated to close contact with dairy cows (H5N1 Bird Flu: Current Situation). Machines used for milking can become contaminated with the virus from one cow, infecting the other cows on the farm, which increases the chance that it will spill over to humans. The more people it infects, the more opportunities the virus will have to mutate in a way that is more infectious to humans.

Imagindairy is not the only company investing in precision fermentation, and they don’t even plan to sell directly to consumers, but rather distribute raw materials to food companies.

I had no idea that milk could be made using genetically modified microorganisms until I stumbled across an article about Imagindairy while completing an assignment for my Biotechnology and Society class. I think the concept is so fascinating and has the potential to solve a lot of problems.

I’ve been stocking up on these articles while my summer load is a little bit lighter, and I was going to keep this one on the shelf for a little longer, but I’ve already had to update it between writing this and publishing it because of the exploding cases of bird flu in the US. I just added it because I was doing research on influenza for a class and thought it was relevant, but it’s kind of scary how fast it’s escalating. Here’s to hoping we don’t see another pandemic soon…

Writing this week’s article made me think about lab grown meat, which we’ll look into in a future Synopsis! Stay tuned to learn with me!

Amitai Ziv. “Mushrooms instead of Cows: The Start-up That Teaches Plants to Produce Milk Is Coming to the Shelves.” Tech12, tech12, 16 Aug. 2023, http://www.tech12.co.il/index-startups/Article-00ee20af58de981027.htm. Accessed 1 July 2024.

CDC. “H5N1 Bird Flu: Current Situation.” Avian Influenza (Bird Flu), 21 June 2024, http://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html.

“ImaginDairy.” ImaginDairy, 2024, imagindairy.com/. Accessed 1 July 2024.

Imagindairy. “IMAGINDAIRY UNVEILS INDUSTRIAL SCALE MANUFACTURING of ITS MILK PROTEIN in NEWLY OWNED 100,000 LITER PRODUCTION LINES.” Www.prnewswire.com, 17 Jan. 2024, http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/imagindairy-unveils-industrial-scale-manufacturing-of-its-milk-protein-in-newly-owned-100-000-liter-production-lines-302036715.html. Accessed 30 June 2024.

Piazenski, Igor Negreiros, et al. “From Lab to Table: The Path of Recombinant Milk Proteins in Transforming Dairy Production.” Trends in Food Science & Technology, vol. 149, July 2024, p. 104562, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2024.104562. Accessed 6 June 2024.

Pope, Daniel H., et al. “Examining the Environmental Impacts of the Dairy and Baby Food Industries: Are First-Food Systems a Crucial Missing Part of the Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems Agenda Now Underway?” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 18, no. 23, Jan. 2021, p. 12678, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182312678.

Sims, Emily K., et al. “100 Years of Insulin: Celebrating the Past, Present and Future of Diabetes Therapy.” Nature Medicine, vol. 27, no. 7, July 2021, pp. 1154–64, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01418-2.

Watson, Elaine. “Imagindairy Acquires Industrial-Scale Precision Fermentation Lines for Animal-Free Whey: ‘This Will Allow Us to Support Mass-Market Adoption.’” AgFunderNews, 17 Jan. 2024, agfundernews.com/imagindairy-acquires-industrial-scale-precision-fermentation-lines-for-animal-free-whey-this-will-allow-us-to-support-mass-market-adoption. Accessed 1 July 2024.

Wipf, Jennifer. “Producing Animal-Free Non-Whey Dairy Proteins with Imagindairy.” Ginkgo Bioworks, 26 Mar. 2024, http://www.ginkgobioworks.com/2024/03/26/producing-animal-free-non-whey-dairy-proteins-with-imagindairy/. Accessed 1 July 2024.